Metal Gear Solid: Operation RedFox
by Nixonhacker
Summary: Iraq 2012: A desert city under siege by two armies. Solid Snake must infiltrate the war zone in order to save an old comrade, all the while avoiding a freakish group of mercenaries and the USMC. Business as usual...


METAL GEAR SOLID

OPERATION REDFOX

2012 – Iraq, 100 miles from the Jordanian border

Beneath the sand, he did not feel the desert heat, and for the first day he focused on that instead of the need to urinate. In the night, the cold was not as pronounced, either. He slept only a couple of hours at a time, just enough to stave off exhaustion. Just at the moment, he would have liked another nap, but the staff sergeant was harrying the two lance corporals about an arm's reach away from his hole in the way that staff sergeants can.

The shouting was something about their biological threat detection training or some such garbage. The staff sergeant was also talking at the maximum possible volume, only because he knew, or thought he knew, that there were not any enemies in the area.

_I was going to wait another couple of hours, but this blowhard is pissing me off_, he thought. The two lance corporals stood at perfect attention and stayed that way throughout the entire tirade as the staff sergeant paced around them, yelling.

_Wait for it,_ he thought. _ He's going to stop yelling and turn around, staring into the distance as if there's a single thought in his head that the Corps didn't put there, and then he'll monologue._

The staff sergeant stopped talking and turned away from the two lance corporals, staring into the distance as if there was a single thought in his head that the Corps hadn't put there.

"You know, you grunts, that I've been in this Corps for…"

He got a couple of words further, but the lance corporals didn't hear it.

Snake burst from beneath his pile of sand, grabbing the first grunt from behind and slamming him head-first into the ground. He jammed his left foot onto the unfortunate troop's windpipe as the other marine turned. The staff sergeant hadn't stopped speaking.

Snake kicked the downed marine in the head hard enough to knock him out as the next one drew his M9 pistol. Snake could see that he was only 18 or 19, new, green, an overachiever that had made lance corporal too early and been shipped out to this desert in the middle of nowhere for some cause he didn't understand and probably never would.

With his left hand, Snake jammed the action back on the Beretta so it couldn't fire and hooked his right arm beneath the marine's right elbow. Snake saw the unmistakable look on the boy's face that said _I'm finished_, a look he had seen in many men's eyes over many years on many battlefields. He put his hip below the marine's and shifted his weight, and the boy flipped over and hit the ground hard.

When the staff sergeant turned around, he found the marine on the ground, his elbow bent at an odd angle by Snake's knee. He also saw that the man before him had a Beretta M9 with a silencer pointed at his head.

"Drop the rifle and kill your radio," Snake ordered.

The staff sergeant looked like he didn't know what to do. For a moment the two of them stood face to face. The staff sergeant saw a man that stood a head taller than him, dressed in some odd desert camouflage that he'd never seen, his face obscured by sand-colored paint and his eyes blue and wolf-like.

"Now!" Snake said, pointing the gun at the young marine he had subdued on the ground. The boy's mouth was open, his eyes wide with pain, but no sound was issuing from his throat except for a low croaking.

"All right! All right!" the staff sergeant said, and placed his M4 on the ground, holding up his hands. His mind raced to figure out how a corpsman was supposed to act in the face of a hostage situation.

Snake smiled just slightly.

"Where's the latrine?" he asked. He'd been unable to figure out where it was despite a whole day of recon, and he didn't feel like figuring it out now.

The staff sergeant stuttered.

"It's… it's…"

"Quickly."

"It's north of the tents, in the lee of the rock wall… Jesus Christ…" the staff sergeant gasped as Snake pointed the weapon at his neck.

"You're relieved of duty, sergeant," Snake said, and pulled the trigger.

The weapon made a dull _fwup_ and the sergeant grabbed reflexively at his jugular and the tranquilizer dart that protruded from it. He collapsed into a heap on the desert floor.

Snake let go of the lance corporal's arm. The boy gasped and hugged his arm to his chest, cradling it and rolling onto his side. Snake jacked the action on his modified M9 to reload it and inspected it to make sure it hadn't gotten any sand in it.

_Not the most reliable piece of equipment I've got,_ Snake reflected as he dusted some of the sand out of his hair. The marine struggled to his feet, his right arm hanging limply at his side. Snake watched him with a detached lack of concern as he got into what amounted to a fighting stance.

The boy could see, now that he had a good look at the man, that the hair at his temples was greying, and his beard was salted as well. The boy could see, through the man's face paint, that he was regarding the young marine with a tired glance.

"What's your name, soldier?" Snake asked. The last word was almost mocking.

"Henry," the boy said. The arm still hung limp, stunned.

"Is your elbow broken, Henry?" Snake asked.

"I don't know," the marine said.

"I'm sorry if it is," Snake said, and shot him in the chest in mid-sentence.

Henry stumbled forward, grabbing onto Snake's uniform with his good hand.

"Who… are… you…?" he managed to ask in the moment before he went down.

"A name means nothing on the battlefield," Snake said.

The boy hit the sand.

---

Snake had gotten a decent idea of the south end of the base from his extended stay in the sands. The command tent was on the southeast end, east of the impromptu chopper pad that had been spray-painted into the sand. Directly north of Snake lay the tents for the individual grunts. The two lance corporals had been the only security on the southern end of the compound. Snake expected the troops up near the north end of the camp to head back within the next few minutes. He fully planned on finishing off the entire camp before that happened.

Snake ran past the barracks and saw the welcome sight of a latrine.

_Thank God._

---

The codec connection opened without any problems.

_Snake… are you calling me from… the bathroom?_ Otacon asked.

_Er… no, _Snake said.

_Whatever… look, I saw how you handled those troops a minute ago. Are you _trying_ to get discovered?_

_They'll never know what hit them. I took out the first guy before he saw anything happen and the new tranqs should muck up any memories those guys have since before their tough-guy staff sergeant even got into the last part of his rant, _Snake said.

_Come on, Snake! That stuff worked on Mei Ling's cat, we haven't even tested it on humans yet! Sometimes I think you _like_ taking risks, _Otacon said.

"_Who dares, wins,"_ Snake said, zipping up his fly.

_Yeah, yeah. When are we going to come up with our own slogan?_

_Raiden had a couple of suggestions, but they were both pretty lame, _Snake said. _I'll let you know if anything comes to mind. Meantime, what's the sit-rep on the north end of the base?_

Snake listened as Otacon messed around with some controls.

_Okay…looks like some of the few and the proud are trading insults with the Mujahideen over by the chain-link fence at the south end of the city,_ Otacon said.

_Mujahideen in the south end! The last intelligence report we snagged from that U2 said that the secularists had the south and west areas of the city locked down, _Snake said.

_I know… Snake, this whole situation is out of control, _Otacon said. _This prison has been a secret of the CIA since before Gulf War II even started. This place has been in operation since before Shadow Moses. America told the United Nations it had suspended all of its secret prisons in 2009, after the Bush Administration got out of office. The secularists winning this battle here might have meant they would keep it hushed up to make sure the US remained an ally, but if Uncle Sam thinks that the Mujahideen are going to win the fight here and blow the lid off the whole thing, they won't hesitate to bombard the area back into the Stone Age to cover it up._

_What's the story on the other side of the chain-link?_ Snake asked.

_The only real way in is right through the gap in the wall, the front gate. I count 7 Mujahideen and about a dozen Marines. There's an Abrams tank between you and the chain-link fence, but it looks unoccupied for the moment. There's movement in the command tent… I think that maybe there are two or three people. Just north of that latrine in the shadow of the rocks there's a couple buildings that look consistent with USMC storage facilities, _Otacon said.

_All right, _Snake said, nodding. _I know what I need to do. Are you sure the hack disc will work on the AEGIS system they have in the command tent?_

_Mei Ling typed it up for me herself, _Otacon said. Snake smiled at the thought of the young Chinese woman whose technology had saved him so many times.

_We couldn't get the right satellite with line-of-sight in time for the mission, so you haven't got a Soliton radar on this one. Don't get cocky,_ Otacon said.

_Why would you ever think that?_ Snake said, and moved.

---

He could hear the guards jeering at the north end of the compound, though the rocks obstructed his view. The barracks and storage and latrine were located so as to keep them out of view of enemy fire, a situation which might soon develop. So far, Snake gathered that neither the Mujahideen nor the USMC had been ordered to start killing each other yet.

The Mujahideen, knowing they would be outnumbered and outgunned if they started shooting, were taking their time taunting the US soldiers, and the marines, who hadn't been ordered to start shooting until the brass assessed the situation, were being southerners. Near as Snake could tell, everybody on the base was either from Alabama, South Carolina, or West Virginia, or at least their drill instructors had been and it had rubbed off on them.

Snake moved slowly toward the nearest storage building. Both were only about twenty feet square, constructed of makeshift materials that Snake guessed were bullet-resistant and fire-retardant. He put his ear to the door, and hearing nobody, quickly entered, holstering the M9 at his side and the combat knife in the sheath on his chest.

Snake was not aware of it, but his eyes glowed when he saw weapons. In a few short seconds he'd laid hands on a Beretta M9 with five magazines of lethal ammunition, an M4A1 carbine with five magazines of ammunition and with a 40mm M203 grenade launcher affixed to the end, four magnesium flash-bang grenades, and a box with six 40mm HE grenades inside.

_Otacon_, Snake said into the Codec, _I'm well-armed now. The other storage building might be their foodstuffs. I'm going to grab a few MREs while I'm still here and then hit the command tent._

_Hit?_ Otacon asked.

_Uh… figuratively speaking, of course._

_Right._

Snake crept up to the other building and found, as he had expected, a storage room for meals ready to eat and nonperishable bulk foods. He also found copious amounts of alcohol, which he ignored.

Snake selected potatoes and baked beans, spaghetti and meat sauce, turkey alfredo, and a few he didn't recognize, and stuffed them in his field pack.

He got a good look at the command tent as he crept up to the Abrams tank that sat neglected in the dead-center of the base. To the north, he could see the marines laughing at the Mujahideen. The two languages were equally incomprehensible to Snake as he saw one of the people in the command tent leave to go toward the chain-link.

_Probably reigning in the troublemakers…or telling them to pull back and get ready to start bombing the area…_

Snake cradled the M4 in the crook of his elbows and crawled along the ground, toward the command tent, fast enough to make progress, but slow enough that he didn't excite the vision of the troops that might look back toward their camp. If they started reorganizing for a raid in the next few minutes, it would be a miracle if he wasn't discovered. He needed to hope that the marine that had just left the command tent wanted to go moon the jihadis and not marshal his men.

Snake couldn't tell if the officer's speech was deriding his men or his enemies, and didn't care as he reached the side of the tent.

_Two guys still inside… I can't get to the eastern side of the tent where the communications dish is without them knowing…_

Snake held his breath as another officer came out of the tent. He had his eyes closed… yawning… stretching. The tent flap fell closed behind him, and Snake, who had been suppressing the desire to yawn himself, struck like his codename implied.

He had the silenced M9 out, and in a deft move he kicked out the man's knee, getting behind him and putting the knife to his throat.

"Don't make any noise, Major," Snake whispered, and slowly lead the man over to the east side of the tent. Snake could feel that there was no fear in the major. He was taller than Snake by several inches, his skin the darkest ebony Snake had ever seen on anybody.

"What's the access code for the AEGIS system? Speak!" Snake said, pressing the knife just a little bit harder.

"You're not Mujahideen," the major said. He seemed a little bit surprised, but not shaken.

_Great, the only non-pants-pisser of the bunch and he had to be the one guarding the system…_ Snake thought.

Snake took a breath, and let the killer in him speak. He hated the feeling of comfort and release that it gave him.

"Give me the access code and I won't kill you," Snake said.

"I don't think you will, anyway," the marine said. "I think you're American, like me, though I don't know what the hell you could possibly be doing. And I don't think you can take me, either."

_Shit_, Snake thought.

The Major put an elbow into Snake's stomach and kicked off of him, going into a roll and turning to face him. Snake saw the Major's hand drop to his sidearm, saw his mouth open to raise an alarm…

_I'm caught…_

The Marine floundered and flopped to the ground, twitching for a bit and then gasping. Snake realized he was pointing the M9 at the Major and that a tranquilizer dart was sticking out right between the man's eyes. He realized he hadn't even registered doing it, that the killer, and not him, had been the one to take down the marine.

A low, taunting British voice simmered to the top of Snake's memory, echoing in the dry wind.

_There's a killer in you._

_Not now, _Snake shook his head, and crept over to the southern tent flap, hoping his altercation hadn't been heard.

Snake waited and listened. In a moment, the sound of fingers hitting keys drifted over to him.

_Now!_

The captain had about enough time to look over and realize that Snake was not anybody he knew on the base before he got a dart in the neck and sagged backward in his reclining chair.

_What sort of beauty parlor is this! Does anybody even fight anymore?_ Snake wondered at the office roller chair, and kicked the marine away from the desk. The chair rolled over to a row of cardboard boxes and bumped into them.

He took out a black disc from his equipment and inserted it into the computer terminal, contacting Otacon as he scanned the rest of the tent visually. Nobody else was around, but the north flap hung open. Snake could see the dozen or so marines jeering at the Mujahideen, and any moment they could turn back and see irregular movement in the tent.

_This is Snake. Otacon, I couldn't get an access code from any of the marines. Where does that leave us?_ Snake asked.

_We should still be all right, the program has a hacking subroutine in there, since I thought you might've had trouble getting a code, _Otacon said.

_How long?_ Snake asked.

_Easy, easy. Another thirty seconds. Is that Abrams still unoccupied?_

_Yeah._

_All right, I'll add it to the targets. Got everything you need from the weapons and food storage? _Otacon asked.

_Burn the place, _Snake said.

_Got it._

---

Khalid al-Nasr had heard the sounds of American heavy artillery before. It had been in the West Bank. The Israelis had used American cannons, and Khalid had always known the difference between them and Soviet artillery. Mercenaries like himself picked up little things like that.

But why wasn't he putting his head down? He had his AK-47 at the ready – the marines behind him had, all of a sudden, primed their M4s at the sound of the cannon. Everybody stood, facing one another with the chain-link fence between them, completely unsure of how to act.

_I'm not getting down because the shell isn't headed for me…_ Khalid thought in the instant before the Abrams tank was blasted to fiery shreds.

The marines leaped into action, running back toward the base, shouting, raising an alarm… and the Mujahideen and their mercenary conscript Khalid stood around gaping for a moment.

Had the Americans and their flawless computers and satellites mistaken their own tanks and bases for the enemy?

A moment later another shell destroyed the American armory, exploding rounds and sending shrapnel, buckshot, and magnesium flare in all directions.

The Mujahideen all suddenly started laughing. Khalid did not join them as they raised their heads to the sky and cackled, some lifting their Kalashnikovs and spitting bullets into the air over the heads of the marines that ran back to their base with their tails between their legs.

Khalid shook his head and cursed the fools under his breath as the foodstuffs storage building went up. As he walked toward the entrance of the city past the three buses that had been parked and taken off their tires to blockade the exit, the communications satellite that controlled the AEGIS system was directly struck by a shell and sundered, rendering the command station useless save for its emergency radio.

The soldiers' tents and the latrine still stood. Snake had left them with a pot to piss in, at least.

Khalid stopped at the two men who stood at the entrance. Behind them, chaos had taken to the streets of the city. On the left stood a man in heavy riot gear with a helmet that concealed his face. On the right, an older man with long white hair and a white mustache stood, his unsettling blue eyes gazing at Khalid and his mouth set in a thin, ambiguous smile.

"_Ma'asmuki?"_ Khalid the tall, pale, white-haired man. The man had, in his left hand, an archaic revolver, which he twirled absently, almost as if he wasn't aware he was doing it.

"_Issmi Shalashaska,"_ the odd man said, and turned immediately to the other man that had joined the Mujahideen earlier in the week… the man in the ceramic riot gear.

Khalid felt the amazingly strong urge to leave the two of them alone, and he quickly strode past them and back into the city. He would go back behind their lines and recuperate, for a little while… he had hardly slept. The man that had called himself Shalashaska watched him go, smirking knowingly. It might have unsettled the man in the heavy armor, but if it did there was no way of knowing.

"The Americans are not this incompetent when one of their secrets is at stake," the low, echoing voice of the man in the armor seemed to come from all around the two of them.

"He'll be through here soon… I know it," said Shalashaska. "Give him no quarter. He's left a trail of corpses in his wake, and many of them better men than you."

"I will remove all obstacles for our battle," said the armored man.

Shalashaska frowned.

"I made plenty of contingencies, anyway. Do as you see fit."

He turned on his spurred heel and strode back toward the city. The armored man had begun to raise the grenade launcher when Shalashaska paused. His right hand clenched into a fist slowly, and when he spoke next it seemed to the armored man that his voice had changed, though with the noise of chaos and the reveling Mujahideen it was difficult to tell.

"And do see if you can't take him _alive_. He's _mine_, after all."

He vanished.

---

Snake crawled along the eastern edge of the camp as hell brook loose a shell at a time behind him. None of the marines would remember who had taken them down, assuming that Otacon and Mei Ling's new 3-minute memory erasing tranquilizer actually worked. Snake privately hoped he hadn't scrambled anybody's childhood memories by pumping them full of the stuff.

The gunfire and explosions happening in the city sounded close. A grenade went off what had to be less than a mile away, and Snake instinctively went still for a moment before assessing the situation behind him and moving closer to the chain-link fence.

He removed the tungsten carbide wire-cutters from his equipment bag and snipped a small hole in the fence at the south eastern corner, then crawled carefully through.

_Okay... watch for…_

He paused as he saw the charred arm of a Mujahideen protruding from behind one of the buses. The buses were arranged in a blocky "U" shape, creating a small square of space that blocked in the entryway to the city.

_Who just blew up Mujahideen? Are the secularists taking back ground?_

A voice issued from within the semi-circle of buses.

"I know you are here. I have gotten rid of these unworthy ones. We should fight singly... it is better for men of action like ourselves."

Snake got to his feet and crept along the eastern bus, heading north toward the city wall. He wanted to keep the bus between himself and whoever might be talking for at least a little while. His friend sounded African, like many of the grunts he'd seen and heard in Zanzibar.

"Like me, you endure despite outlandish odds, armies of foes. Your body and spirit have not been broken, and in spite of a life of battles, you come back to the field of death again. Solid Snake… I am the Earth, and I wish to do battle with you now."

_He's… THERE!_

Snake unpinned a flash-bang and hurled it over the roof of the bus. The blast that followed brought a shout of surprise from the enemy, and Snake leaped around the corner, squeezing in between the bus and the wall, brandishing the M4. He acquired the target, a man who looked like he was dressed in some kind of high-endurance metal plating complete with a helmet and face-guard.

Not an inch of skin showed on the man, but Snake had already acquired him and he began to unload with the M4 on full auto while his opponent stood stunned. The bullets struck and bounced off, ricocheting dangerously as Snake dove to the side and rolled away from his foe.

"That would have beaten a lesser man," the Earth chuckled, shaking his head and flexing the fingers of his gauntleted hands. "Fortunately for both of us, I am far better."

"If by 'better' you mean 'nickel-plated' then yeah, I agree," Snake said. If this Earth fellow wanted to parley, fine. It gave him more time to assess the damage he'd done. It looked like the armor the guy was wearing was pretty hard-core, the bullets hadn't even left marks, and Snake could see the flattened FMJ rounds laying around him – the rounds that had hit directly and rather than ricocheting had simply flattened and broken.

_I might not have anything that can penetrate that, it looks like it could be tungsten or composite laminate armor for all I know, _Snake thought. _But how the hell can he even _move _in that suit, if that's the case? The thing must weigh nearly two or three hundred pounds._

"The man who comes to the battlefield prepared is ever the winner," the Earth said, and drew from behind his back an M79 grenade launcher. He opened it and slid a 40mm grenade in, one that Snake recognized as a buckshot load. Snake's mind started to make contingencies.

_The flash-bang caught him off-guard, but I can't use one in this close or I'll toast my ears for sure… my 40mm frags are risky at this range, too. CQC is probably worthless against this guy… I can't get a knife in and damned if I could flip him around or even find a pressure point through a suit like that. Come on Snake… think…_

Snake leaped and rolled to the side as the M79 unleashed it's buckshot. He heard what he thought could've been a piece of it shredding into his left arm, but he didn't feel anything. He didn't have time to evaluate any wounds, anyway. For the moment, there was battle.

"You are fast," the Earth commented, breeching the action on the grenade launcher and shoving another round into the chamber. Snake kicked in the door of the east bus and got inside as another buckshot round tore the door from its hinges behind him.

_Taking out that M79 would help, but I need to catch him off-guard first, _Snake thought as he moved toward the opposite end of the bus. Another buckshot round fired off, blasting open the side door of the bus. The Earth moved into the bus, each footstep slow and deliberate, shaking the very ground.

_Screw it, never would've gotten this far without taking a chance now and again, _Snake thought, and fired off his own high-explosive 40mm round directly at the Earth.

The slug, which at that range would've hit with enough force to decapitate a human being, slammed directly into the Earth's chest. It hadn't yet had a chance to arm, so it just clanked to the floor of the bus and rolled underneath a seat. The Earth stumbled back a step as Snake dove out the open back end of the bus.

"Do not run! I thought you were a warrior!" the Earth roared after Snake as he reloaded the grenade launcher.

_I think the grenade fell right about… there, _Snake thought, and unleashed a storm of bullets at foot-level into the interior of the bus.

The 40mm grenade that had fallen to the floor erupted, blowing out the windows of the bus and choking the air inside with smoke and heat. Snake heard a roar of protest from the Earth, who fired another buckshot round wildly. Snake felt the heat of the shot over his right shoulder and instinctively tumbled out of the way.

_That would've been my head, _Snake noted as he crawled outside the cage of buses and hid behind the southern one. The Earth stomped out of the east bus and raged, firing what could only be the same type of explosive round Snake had just used. This one impacted with the south bus and blew open the middle of it. Snake decided it was time to move, and headed toward the west bus as the Earth reloaded and fired again.

Snake had spent the M4's clip, and he let the magazine fall and slapped in another, racking the action as he tiptoed into the west bus through the door.

_I can't penetrate that armor, _Snake thought, _but he can't possibly be able to move and fight in that suit for long without tiring. Maybe if I just wait him out…_

Snake stopped abruptly as he saw a small object sitting on top of one of the bus seats with a note taped to it. The object was actually a thermite grenade, which, when triggered, released a ferocious and un-smotherable 4500 degree flame that could melt through military machinery in minutes.

The note said simply:

Be seeing you soon, brother.

-- Snake(L)

_I don't even want to think about that now, _Snake thought tiredly, and ripped the note off the grenade.

The Earth fired two rounds into the sky and watched as they exploded around him when they hit the ground.

"Snake! Come out! End this!"

"Okay."

The Earth reeled around in time to hear the flash-bang fall less than five feet from him. The ensuing blast blinded him, and he let loose one more buckshot round that he'd loaded, which missed.

When he came back to his senses a few seconds later, the thermite grenade had already detonated, and his armor was searing. He stumbled out of the heat, feeling his flesh curdle and the armor on his lower body and torso drip off of him.

Snake unleashed the M4, riddling the Earth with bullets until he stopped moving forward and fell onto his back. The blood that issued forth from his wounds boiled.

"Snake…" the Earth gargled. "I was a Tutsi in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994. The world did not listen to our pleas…"

"Glad to know that not a lot has changed," Snake said, and abruptly ended the maudlin drivel with another grenade. He had enough distance to let it arm this time, and the Earth was blown to pieces.

---

Snake had picked up shrapnel in his left arm, as he'd thought. He spent a moment digging out what pieces he could find with his knife, keeping down any shouts of pain as he did so. Questions kept circling through his head – Was the grenade really from Liquid? What angle was that Earth guy playing in the area, and how much time did he have before the marines retaliated for his little stunt? They were all matters of great importance.

He applied some styptic, disinfectant, and wrapped the wound in a tight field dressing, and then slipped back into his uniform.

_Snake, what's your status? _Otacon asked over the codec.

_Ran into a new circus freak, _Snake said. _Ceramic or Chobham armor, I think, liked using a grenade launcher. Rwandan national. Called himself "The Earth." See if you can get any data on him. And Otacon… I think Liquid might be nearby._

_It wouldn't surprise me… he has a habit of turning up, _Otacon said. _I'll run a check on that guy. Is he neutralized?_

_Yeah, _Snake said. _I killed him pretty hard._

_Okay, _Otacon said. _Keep out of sight and see about getting to the northeast quadrant of the city. I've been monitoring USMC communications, and it looks like they haven't got any other significant forces in the area. Mei Ling and I crunched a few numbers, and we both agree that you've got about 24 hours before any serious air support can get there. Snake, the Mujahideen have overrun the city. Get the VIP out of that prison before the Air Force smokes the place._

_Acknowledged, _Snake said.

---

Snake saw an intersection as he entered the city. The roads were dirt, the buildings made of brick and grey cinderblock materials. He knew his camouflage would do him very little good, but accepted it as a risk. He had no other uniform to put on, and needed to make the best of a bad situation.

The roads to the north and east were both blockaded by heaped debris. Snake kept to the west until he got to the edge of the building. A long alleyway stretched westward. As Snake peeked down it, he saw a column of Mujahideen, several opening fire toward the far west end, others strafing the balconies of the apartment buildings on either side of the alley.

Snake did not know enough Arabic to know what they were shouting, but as he saw an unarmed Arab woman fall under the blaze of an AK-47, he had a pretty good idea.

_I can't let this go,_ Snake thought, and slung his M4, removing the silencer from his M9 tranq gun and attaching it to the barrel of the Beretta with lethal ammo in it.

From the west end of the alley, a spray of machinegun fire answered the Kalashnikovs, and two of the Mujahideen fell to the ground, undone.

_That's a serious gun… it sounds like the M2HB,_ Snake thought as he crept up to a grocer's stand that had already been shot full of holes. It appeared that the alleyway served as a market, with the apartments being the residences of those that owned the shops and stands.

Snake acquired the man in the back of the column of Mujahideen and performed a double-tap to the head as casually as writing his signature. The fighter went down immediately, pitching forward as the heavy machinegun down the alley opened up again. The Mujahideen took no notice of their fallen comrade, instead diving to cover behind similar stands and one derelict car as the machinegun continued to unload.

Instructions were shouted, Mujahideen went into the apartments on either side of the alleyway.

_No way,_ Snake thought, and entered the apartment complex to the south, rushing through the rooms westward. He heard the cries of a young man.

Snake didn't know much Arabic, but he knew enough to know what the man was shouting to the Mujahideen.

"_Please," he's saying, _thought Snake_, "Please, for the sake of God, please don't kill my son."_

Snake passed through three apartments, startling women and children that lay huddled together, shivering with fear. He wished that staying together like that could protect them. He noticed that the women were not covered in some cases. They truly were secularists, or at least no more religious than the average American. One of them whimpered at his passage, but he blazed through with a unity of purpose.

He reached the last doorway, covered as it was by a hanging rug. He swept it aside and found a Mujahideen struggling with a boy of perhaps 12 as the father pleaded with the gunman.

Snake wasted no time on diplomacy. He put a 9mm round in the Mujahideen's neck before the man had even turned to see him, and the fighter stumbled back, letting his AK fall from his hands. It hung suspended from his shoulder by the strap as he leaned against a wall and then slid down it, leaving a trail of blood.

"_I'm sorry,"_ Snake said to the father in the best Arabic he could manage. He felt bad about what he'd done to their wall.

"_Il-hamdulillah! Shukran! Shukran!"_ the man wept, taking hold of Snake's shoulders with his hands.

The mother, a woman who had opted to wear a head-covering, held her child and sobbed much of the same. Snake pushed the man off him and held a finger to his lips, then pointed to the children and indicated to the father that he should move them out of the apartment. The father nodded and said something in Arabic that Snake took to mean, "I understand!" and then he quickly marshaled his family away.

There was shouting in the alleyway. Snake inched over to a window, which had no glass, and peered out into the street. There were six Mujahideen left, standing at attention in the street, one of them holding a woman by the throat with a knife and speaking loudly.

_Probably telling the gunner to come out or he'll waste the woman, _Snake thought. _Too bad for him._

Snake took his time aiming. He didn't want to hit the woman. He needed to make a head shot… anything else and his jerking reaction might cut her throat by accident. He waited until the Mujahideen involuntarily relaxed the pressure of the knife at the woman's throat, just barely enough for Snake to see.

It was enough and more than enough. The Beretta quietly spat a round into the man's left ear and out his right, and he collapsed on the ground as the Mujahideen all turned toward Snake and opened up.

The woman fled out of the alley as Snake hit the ground, listening as the bullets chewed against the walls of the apartment building. The machinegun spoke again, and in moments the Mujahideen were mowed down to a man, their bodies swept several feet down the street by a current of lead.

A terrible silence followed in the next moment, disturbed only by the hiss of blood mist settling.

Snake waited. The gunner could've been anybody, even another crazy mercenary out to get him by "removing all obstacles" or "removing unworthy ones" or something like that. Snake had certainly battled less sane adversaries than the Earth, and he wanted to be ready for anything.

The voice that shouted in Arabic instructed Snake to come out of hiding and identify himself. But though the voice spoke Arabic, it wasn't an Arabic voice. It was a woman's voice… a voice that…

_It can't be…_

"Meryl?" Snake called.

Silence.

"Come out here! Drop your weapons and come out where I can see you!" in English this time, and there was no question it was Meryl.

Snake tossed the M4, his M9s, the knife, and all his grenades out into the street, and walked out with his hands raised high. He faced the gunnery nest and saw, through the bricks and sandbags that made up the nest, a flash of red hair.

Meryl emerged. She had grown a little taller and older in the five years since he'd last seen her. It might have been the uniform and camouflage – an odd desert/splitter mix that blended in fairly well in the urban environment, but with an odd face paint pattern.

She trained her Desert Eagle on him for only a moment, then let it fall to her side. He did not know how to read her expression.

"What the hell are _you_ doing here?" she demanded, turning away from him suddenly. Snake shook his head and collected his equipment from the ground.

"I imagine the same thing you're doing," Snake said. "I take it you got the same tip I did?"

"I didn't think you'd fall for the same trap," Meryl said. "I'm disappointed."

"That tears me up inside, believe me," Snake said. "So I guess you intended on just waltzing on in here, shooting up the place, and breaking into the prison yourself."

Meryl got within arms length of Snake and looked directly into his eyes. He found himself saddened by how much colder her eyes had become since Shadow Moses.

"Are _you_ going to lecture _me_ about taking on ridiculous odds?" she asked.

"I'm not here to lecture anybody," Snake said. "But if we have the same objective, then we need to work together. And if we're working together, then _I'm_ in charge."

"Is that so?" Meryl asked.

"It is," Snake said. "You know I'm the best chance he's got."

They stared one another down for a moment, and then she spat in his face. Snake blinked and wiped himself off with his sleeve.

"That what they're teaching in Next Gen Special Forces these days?" he asked.

"That was for New York," she said. "Now help me treat some of these civilians and I'll share some intel with you."

---

It took a little while to patch up some of the people injured in the fighting. The Mujahideen had somehow gotten hold of jacketed soft point rounds for their AK-47s, which had pierced through walls and done more damage than was necessary. Snake could not understand much of what the Arab men and women said to him.

He knew "God save you," and "Thank God," and a few other things, and he tried his best to make it known that he appreciated their thanks.

"How did you get in here?" Snake asked.

"The Peace Corps was here for a few weeks before the Mujahideen started a cell in this city. I masqueraded as a relief worker for the Peace Corps and got as much intel as I could about the layout of the prison before the Marine Corps got chased out by the hostiles," Meryl said, applying the last bit of bandage to a boy's calf.

Snake frowned at his empty medical kit. Meryl had also run out of medical supplies. There were still injured people, though they had taken care of women and children first.

"What's the situation over at the prison compound?" Snake asked.

"Small, cramped holding cells, mostly exposed to the elements. I wasn't able to get any close-range recon on them because none of us were allowed into the compound by the marines. I was able to chat up a couple of troops, though. There's a weak section of wall near the southeast end of the compound, one we could use explosives to blow open," Meryl said.

Snake frowned. He didn't like the idea of blasting holes through walls to get to his objectives – it usually ended in trouble.

"No other way to get inside?" Snake asked.

"No. The walls are too high and the Mujahideen are guarding them too closely. I think we may need to storm it," she said.

Snake nodded as she passed him photographs and maps that outlined the area.

"They've set up barricades in these places," she said, indicating several spots on the map. "I imagine they've set up ambushes along the open routes. The secularist militia is in tatters right now, and soon the Mujahideen will move in with full force to finish the job."

"That isn't the only problem," Snake said. "Uncle Sam isn't terribly happy with how things are turning out here, either. Otacon contacted me a little while ago and told me that the Air Force will be on its way in less than 24 hours to burn this place to the ground. They'll cover up any evidence that a secret prison was ever here. You need to tell these people to get out of here."

Meryl's fists clenched and kicked over the table they'd set the maps onto, overturning it. The onlookers, a handful of patched up women and children, huddled together fearfully at the warrior woman's rage.

"They'll never change, will they Snake?" she said. "They would care if it were _their_ families, _their_ homes, _their _livelihoods!"

"No," Snake said. "I used to think that they might change, if I fought hard enough. I didn't know who the enemy was for a long time. Now I know that it's just people like us, who are told to kill… and who go do it without question. I'm glad you got out of that earlier than I did. You seem to be choosing your own side well enough."

Meryl turned away from him, hiding her face. A moment of silence passed between them, and then Snake watched as Meryl gave a small speech in Arabic to those assembled, conveying everything they needed to know. There were gasps of horror, looks of shock, there was anger. Snake had seen people kicked out of their own homes and dispossessed before. It was a reality of war that he hadn't needed to face in a long time, and it had never failed to sober him.

The people moved out of the apartment they'd used as a medical shack. One man remained for a moment, the father of the boy Snake had saved from being a hostage. He took Snake's hand and looked him in the eye.

"_Salaam Alaikum,"_ he said. Snake nodded, and the man left.

"I don't know that one," Snake said.

"He said, 'Peace be with you,'" Meryl explained.

---

They were in the apartment Meryl had used as a base camp. The place was Spartan and efficient – a soldier's foxhole. Boxes filled with the M2HB's .50 caliber ammo lay open, along with stuff clearly taken off dead Mujahideen. Snake heard gunfire to the north of them, mortars impacting in the streets to the east and northeast. The fighting only seemed to be intensifying.

"If we head north from this position, we'll get to the secularists' militia camp on the western edge of the city," Meryl said. "Most of the heaviest fighting is occurring there. I think we can use it as cover. We can sneak through one of the buildings bordering the camp and use it to get past one of the barricades to the north of the building. From there, we need to head east until we get to a sewer access point near the center of town. We'll travel under the streets to avoid the Mujahideen patrols and come up inside a building that's on the eastern side of all their barricades. From there, we can stick to alleys heading north, and if we're lucky we'll be able to stay out of sight and get to the southeast corner of the prison compound."

Snake nodded.

"All right… you're sure all of these routes will still work?"

"As sure as I can be. If the Mujahideen have blocked off any of the routes we're counting on, we'll just need to improvise. You can improvise, can't you Snake? Or are you too old?" Meryl asked.

Snake couldn't decide if Meryl was joshing on him in a friendly manner or delivering a barely-veiled insult, so he merely smirked in the same way he had when he'd first seen her. He knew she hated that.

"Watch and learn, kid," Snake said. "I'll race you to the extraction point. Which reminds me… what support are you drawing from? How did you lay hands on Army-issue urban camouflage and a fortified machinegun?"

"Shadow Moses wasn't my first assignment," Meryl said. "The brass put me in all sorts of strange places, guarding things that I shouldn't have known about. It wasn't too hard impersonating a soldier again and stealing a few choice armaments. Here… a present from the first Bush administration."

Meryl reached into one of the boxes and tossed Snake a camouflage uniform that matched her own. He had it on in a few moments.

_The quartermaster only has two sizes… too large and too small,_ Snake thought ruefully as he rolled up the sleeves a few times and tucked the pant legs into his boots.

"How are you doing on ammo?" Meryl asked.

"Pretty good," Snake said. "I've got grenades and flash-bangs to spare, and I'm still in good shape with my firearms. Have you got any more medical supplies?"

"No," Meryl said. "We'll just have to not get shot."

"Agreed," Snake said. "Take point, I've got your six."

---

They kept to the western edge, creeping slowly along the face of the buildings and scanning the street for hostiles. Several times Meryl gave Snake the signal to go prone, and he obeyed without question. They crawled for several feet, using the skeletons of cars, buses, and trucks as cover for a while. Twice a column of Mujahideen ran right by them as they remained perfectly still among scattered debris.

They were coming closer to the major concentration of the gunfire. The building that Snake and Meryl crawled alongside ended, and there was a wide opening. The area between the two buildings was large, hemmed in by the city wall on the west side, a C-shaped arena of death as the secularists lay pinned down behind barricades, firing back as they saw the opportunity.

Snake crawled up alongside Meryl, both observing the battle.

"Who the hell is that?" Snake asked.

He'd spotted a thin, pale woman with long black hair, dressed in a black outfit that looked like leather or rubber. It covered her entire form, wrapping her hands completely. The texture reminded Snake a little bit of Raiden's "Skull Suit," though the similarities in style ended there. It certainly didn't look as if it afforded as much protection as a FOXHOUND uniform.

Otacon rang in just then.

_Snake! What's your status?_

_I'm with Meryl. The Mujahideen are suppressing the secularists on the west side of the city. This is about as one-sided as it gets,_ Snake said.

_Meryl! _Otacon asked.

_Oh… yeah, it's her. I guess her intel is about as good as ours. She knows a route to the prison that minimizes the risk of discovery. Look, I think we may have another…_

The woman extended her arm, opening her hand toward the secularists. Snake felt the air flash with heat, and a ball of fire leaped from the woman's hand and slammed into a group of entrenched secularists. They were reduced to bones in an instant, the white fire roiling in an expanding cloud above the bodies.

"Jesus!" Snake muttered.

"It's _her_," Meryl whispered.

"Who?" Snake asked.

_Snake, I've got the data on the group of people that are working with the Mujahideen, _Otacon said. _They call themselves The Five Rings. They're the Earth, the Fire, the Wind, the Water, and the Void. You already took care of the Earth. If I had to guess, I'd say that this woman is the Fire. They're a mercenary organization that formed a couple of years after you killed Big Boss in Zanzibar. All of them are the victims of some type of terrible…_

_Save it, _Snake said to Otacon, _what do I need to know to take her out?_

_Her internal body temperature is so high that your tranquilizer darts will probably be ineffective. Her suit is fire retardant, and she generates heat around herself so intense that she'll literally burn your bullets out of the air,_ Otacon said. _But for her to generate that sort of a heat shield takes time. _ _Snake, if you can find a way to stun or distract her, I'd recommend a CQC takedown. Keep on the initiative and lay hands on her. But you've _GOT _to do it quickly, or she'll fry you with a touch!_

"She burned down a building just a few days ago," Meryl said. "There were civilians inside. There wasn't any reason for it… they hadn't fired on her. She just roasted them. We've got to take her down."

"We will… but first we need to do something about her escorts," Snake said.

A grenade fell into the midst of the Mujahideen. The Fire leaped aside, several of the unfortunate gunman near her flying in all directions from the blast. The secularists renewed their attack, and the next few moments were a vicious hail of gunfire.

A great tide of flames issued from behind a derelict truck, sweeping over the few secularists left and destroying them. The few Mujahideen shouted their celebration as the Fire stood on, deadly silent.

"Wait for it," Snake said.

She gave some orders to the troops, and they headed eastward. As she rose to her feet, Snake could see small tendrils of steam issuing from her eyes.

_Is she… crying?_

"Now!" Meryl shouted and leaped from cover.

"Wait!" Snake called after her.

Meryl opened fire with the AK, strafing the area where the Fire stood. The bullets were reduced to sizzling liquid metal that steamed away. The air around the Fire rippled and danced with intense heat. Tongues of flame sprang up in her footprints as she paced slowly toward the impetuous girl with the gun.

"I do not have the freedom to weep," the Fire said. "Not even that. I am cursed… unable to give water to the dead, I give fire to the living."

_We've got another nut in the house,_ Snake thought as he leaped from cover. Meryl dodged as the Fire thrust out her arm, a stream of flame bursting from her open palm. It sailed across the street, immolating a parked car. Snake could hear the paint bubbling.

"Shalashaska told me you would be here. I do not know what he wants with you, but I want the same thing I want from everyone – to see you burn," the Fire said.

"You'll pay for what you did!" Meryl shouted, unpinning a grenade and hurling it at the woman. The explosion blew shrapnel everywhere, but the Fire's wave of heat steamed the flak before it even touched her.

_I'd like to see a battle between this chick and Fortune, _Snake thought as his mind raced for a solution to their predicament. _ I could sell tickets to a catfight like that._

He slung his weapons and instead threw a chunk of brick at her head.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you!" he called.

The heat shield flared up, and the brick burst into flames as it flew toward her. A small portion of it struck her across the temple. She stumbled for a moment, but it wasn't long enough. Meryl tried opening fire again, but the Fire hissed and snapped her fingers. The flame that jetted from her enveloped Meryl's AK. Meryl shouted, dropped it, and ran as the ammunition inside blasted off wildly.

_All right, so she can't liquefy anything larger than a bullet right away_, Snake thought as he dodged a stream of flames that engulfed one of the secularist's foxholes. _Got to hit her with something large… or maybe deprive her of oxygen? But how…_

He heard Meryl's battle cry as she unloaded with the Desert Eagle, the bullets ripping the air aside. Snake could see the gas-action whipping back her hair as each slug fired.

_Wait! Concussion!_

Snake unpinned his two remaining flash-bangs and threw them just out of range of the Fire's burn radius.

"What…?" she laughed, obviously amused with the idea of another grenade going off.

Snake covered his ears and closed his eyes, and she realized what had happened, but too late. The grenades detonated, and he heard her shriek. It was all he needed to locate her. He rushed forward, the knife out.

He grabbed her by the hair and slid the knife into her stomach, opening up her internal organs. The blood that rushed out onto his arm was hot, hotter nearly than boiling water. He leaped back as the body fell. The dust and debris in the street ignited as her blood flowed over it. In a moment she was surrounded in a flaming pool.

"Finally… finally I can die. All those days in Kosovo in 1999, we ethnic Albanians suffered under Slobodan Milosevic… never knowing if we would…"

Snake pulled the Beretta and blew her brains out, which sizzled and smoked as they hit the pavement. In moments, the body disappeared in the fire.

"Meryl… are you all right?" Snake called, coughing. The air around him choked in his lungs, and he stumbled out of the cloud of smoke that filled the area. He found Meryl cradling her right hand. The fire that had destroyed her AK had also gotten her hand, and she was only now noticing.

"God _damn _it!" she said. "She got me! I can barely move it now!"

"Come on, we'll search the camp. If we're lucky there might be something left we can use," Snake said. He felt that his own right arm probably needed some burn cream, too. It was as if somebody had thrown a boiling-hot pot of water onto his arm. The uniform had afforded him some protection, but he would need to inspect himself to make sure he hadn't sustained any serious injury.

_Snake, the heat-bloom in the area has subsided... are you okay?_ Otacon rang.

_Meryl and I took out the Fire,_ Snake said. _We're both hurting a little. We're going to try to find some medical supplies at this secular camp and then move on._

_The Mujahideen have taken over the entire city. Soon patrols will cover most of the streets. After you're done applying meds, try to stick to building interiors or underground routes to avoid discovery, _Otacon said.

_Copy, _Snake said.

---

The secular camp had a few supply boxes intact. They found ointment and bandages. Snake discovered that his own flesh was a little raw and dry, but not burned. Meryl's right hand had swollen up to what seemed like twice its normal size. Snake helped her apply ointment and bind the hand tightly. They did so in silence.

"I'm no good with my left," Meryl complained.

"You'll get better in a hurry or die," Snake said, opening up an MRE and handing it to Meryl before slicing open one himself.

They squeezed the pasty food into their mouths and ate the crackers and small chocolate bars that came with. Snake reflected that the MREs were much tastier than they had been even as recently as Shadow Moses.

_The better-fed Army wins._

"We should rest soon…" Snake said. "We're running out of daylight and the Mujahideen will only intensify patrols in this area. Do you know where we need to go to get to the sewer route?"

"It's east of here, but we'll need to head north through a few buildings to get behind the barricade," Meryl said. "It's likely that the Mujahideen positions have changed since I've been through there last. I can't say for sure how clear the route will be. We'll need to take advantage of camouflage and sneaking as much as we can."

"All right," Snake nodded. "Get us to a place where we can take shelter for a few hours and we'll sleep, eat a little bit more, and then move on the prison under cover of night."

---

The building to the north had been shot to pieces, and the electricity was blown. Snake gathered from the bulletins on the wall and the frosted-glass doors of offices that it had been an office building. Every room came complete with a standard-issue typewriter. The hallway stretched straight through to what looked like a reception area. Ghostly beams of light stabbed through the dusty air through the bullet-holes inflicted on the offices.

Snake stepped over the corpse of a woman in a tight white button-up shirt, a cute tube skirt, and a bright blue head covering. A dead man in a leg-length shirt sat with his back against the wall, his white shirt stained red. There were others, locked in the offices or hiding under desks. The flies had already begun having their way with them.

Snake looked behind him as he got halfway down the hall. Meryl stood looking down at the girl in the blue headdress. She seemed to be muttering something low and quick. Snake walked up to her and took her by the shoulders firmly.

"Meryl!" he said.

Her eyes snapped to his, and her expression hardened.

"I'm fine," she said. She wasn't.

"No you aren't," Snake said. "And it's okay. The only people not affected by this are monsters."

"But you're not affected by it!" she protested.

Snake didn't say anything, but turned and continued toward the opposite end of the building. Meryl slowly followed after him.

The office that stood in between them burst, the door flying off its hinges and the wall opposite the door exploding. Both soldiers hit the floor immediately. Snake looked behind him, his eyes registering a basketball-sized chunk taken out of the wall before another projectile ripped through the office a few feet in front of him, glass and wood splinters flying everywhere.

Snake's codec rang. His right hand went to his ear as another office was ravaged, a section of the office wall between Snake and Meryl collapsing.

_Otacon! What the hell is shooting at us!_ Snake said.

_You are silent, even when you do not believe you are being watched, _said a strange woman's voice. _But your woman… her heart pounds with fear and uncertainty. She will not survive, Solid Snake._

_What! Who the hell are you?_

_I am the Wind, _she said. _You have already killed two of my comrades… but I will stop you. I can hear your every move, your every breath, your every heartbeat._

_Directional microphone? Then you must be close, _Snake said.

_No, Snake, _she said, amusement tickling the edges of her strange voice. _ I do not need microphones or other gadgets. The winds themselves carry sound to my ears from as far away as I choose. You and your foolish woman die in this desert._

_We'll see._

Snake made eye contact with Meryl and made a few hand signals, hoping that Next Gen Special Forces had taught her the same ones he'd been taught.

_Quiet – sniper – crawl – split up – rendezvous – underground – Frequency?_

Meryl answered without pausing, and Snake had to suppress a sigh of relief.

_Understood – rendezvous – 3 blocks east – 2 blocks south – building – frequency – 140.15_

Snake rang her.

_Meryl, it's the Wind. Apparently she's firing from a long way off, but she can hear us without the aid of a directional mic. Get to the rendezvous and whatever you do, don't make any noise! I'm going to try to take her out._ Snake said.

_How the hell do you plan on doing that? _Meryl asked. _You haven't got a sniper weapon of any kind!_

_I'll figure something out, _Snake said. _Get moving to the rendezvous. I'll try to meet you there a little after dark, so don't get worried if I take a little while._

The collapsed wall had opened the area to some sort of garage. Snake crawled into it and Meryl headed toward the reception area.

---

The Wind leaned away from her Barrett M82. The .50 caliber anti-materiel rifle could take out the engine blocks of most military transport vehicles. Shooting a human being with one constituted a violation of international treaties of warfare.

"I'm in love with him," the Wind said. "He makes no sound except when he speaks or interacts with his environment."

"You're not the first femme fatale to fall for the legendary Solid Snake," Ocelot said. "As a matter of fact, the last one was a sniper, too. The death he gave her was sheer brilliance…" He spun his Colt Single Action Army leisurely in his left hand.

"He has killed two of my squad already," she said. "Void wants him taken care of. It is hard enough to hear him without your cape flapping in the wind and your gravelly voice to distract me, Shalashaska."

"Very well," Ocelot said, sounding somewhat disappointed. "Speaking from experience, the girl has a wonderful voice when she screams in pain… a connoisseur of sound such as yourself is sure to appreciate it."

She heard the clink of his spurs fade away, and then there was the panicked heartbeat and breath of the red-haired girl. The Wind smiled to herself. She could not tell if he loved the girl, but she could tell that the girl loved Snake. From what Revolver Ocelot had told her, that would be enough.

She would murder the girl slowly to draw Snake out of hiding, take limbs off of her one at a time, and when she heard Snake's shout of grief at the girl's death, she would know exactly where to shoot next to tear him in half.

---

Meryl crawled at the rate of a sloth down the street. There were no guards in the area that she could see or hear. Her mind and heart raced. The pain in her hand was gone, replaced instead with deep and terrible dread.

_Sniper… another sniper…_

The metal bench a foot to her left shrieked as a bullet struck it. The back of the bench was a bent, basketball-sized hole. Intense warmth washed over Meryl as the friction of the bending metal created heat. Before she could react, another bullet tore up the street in the space between her ankles.

Instinct took over wisdom. She rolled to her side and then got to her feet, running for the side of a building. The bricks on the corner of the building that bordered the nearest alley burst and Meryl changed direction, her heart beating so hard she could feel it hammering against her rib cage.

_Where is she! Where's a blind spot…!_

The engine block of a car ten feet to her left imploded. A grocery stand with exposed, rotting fruit was demolished. Meryl dove for the cover of a building.

_Where!_

The next bullet came from within the building Meryl had put her back against. It burst from the wall a foot away from her cheek, bits of the brick striking her across the temple and jaw, stunning her. Sank to the ground on her side, her eyes losing focus.

_It's over… God, she shot through a building… Snake, I'm sorry… Uncle Roy…_

---

_I've had enough sport,_ the Wind thought. _I'll take off her ear first._

She reached down to retrieve another magazine from her bag, and then she felt the cold of a knife pressed against her throat. Her heart skipped a beat, and she lay prone, stunned and caught between a mixture of incredible fear and indescribable joy.

"I did not hear you," she whispered.

"But I heard you," Snake said. "Hard to keep a Barrett Light Fifty quiet."

"Silence is so beautiful," she said. "I never have it. I am in a constant state of listening, unable to tune out the atrocities of the battlefield, even though I am miles away. Do you know, I was a dispossessed child in the occupied territories of Palestine. When they built up the walls and the checkpoints to separate us from the Israelis, they also kicked my family off of our land, killed our sheep, poisoned our water, anything to get us to leave. Since then, I have survived…"

"Until right now," Snake said, and drove the knife into her jugular, then dragged it horizontally, severing the carotid artery. Her blood jetted onto the rooftop. Snake got to his feet and watched her body twitch a few times as the blood dripped down the side of the building.

He thoroughly field-stripped the Barrett and dropped the pieces down a ventilation shaft on the rooftop.

_Meryl, _Snake said into the codec, _are you okay?_

A muted, slow reply came to him.

_Snake…A round went off near my head. I'm not hit… but… I…_

_Don't move! What's your position?_ Snake asked.

_Snake…_

_Meryl? Meryl!_

---

Ocelot sat back in the makeshift office. He'd closed the door and turned off the lights. He preferred the dark. He suspected it subdued his unwanted house guest.

The phone pulsed. He'd turned the ringer off. He picked up, leaning back in the office chair and propping up his boots, since he'd removed the spurs for the day.

"What's the status on the Five Rings?" asked the voice on the other end.

"Snake has killed the Earth, the Fire, and the Wind. Only the Water and the Void remain. They are just as foolish and cocksure as FOXHOUND and Dead Cell were. They all think the solution is facing Snake one at a time, as if he shares their views on honorable combat," Ocelot said.

"Is the prisoner still secure?"

"As secure as he can be with Solid Snake after him," Ocelot said. "I can always stage a tragic ending for our heroes by having him die at the very last moment."

"No. The Five Rings won't defeat Solid Snake… enact our backup plan."

"I understand," Ocelot said.

"Don't make it any easier for him… but don't let him get killed, either."

"Of course," Ocelot said. "Is there anything else?"

"Make sure the Mujahideen still maintain a strong enough presence that the military will bomb the area. I want the place buried."

"Yes, sir."

---

Meryl's consciousness slipped in and out over the next few minutes. She couldn't tell what was a dream and what was reality, what was Iraq and what was Shadow Moses. She saw the silhouette of Snake, heard his battle cry as he unloaded with what might have been an M4 or the silly-looking FAMAS G2s she remembered.

She heard explosions, shouts, death cries, all of which might have been the first group of Genomes she and Snake had mowed down together, or might have been the jihadis. She felt herself supported by Snake's shoulder, her feet dragging, and she also felt herself dragged along by her legs.

Time slipped in and out.

When she came to, she saw Snake sitting on a crate, a lit cigarette dangling out of his mouth and his combat knife dug deep into his thigh. He grunted a bit and a lump of flattened lead came out and clinked into a hubcap that had two other flat bullets and a pool of thick blood in it. She watched as he applied meds to himself, the pain not even showing on his face.

"I caught a couple, but you're still in good shape," Snake said. To Meryl's knowledge, she hadn't done anything to indicate she was awake.

Meryl tried to sit up, but her head seemed to drift in three or four different directions all at once, and she flopped back to the ground.

"I wouldn't do that," Snake said. "You've got a prize-winning concussion. You'll be out of commission for a few hours at least. Just as well. It'll be dark in another hour or so. I was just about to lay down and catch a few hours of shut-eye myself."

"Where are we?" Meryl thought she asked. In reality it came out sounding somewhat different, but Snake understood her.

"We're at the rendezvous point," Snake said. "Turned out the Mujahideen were actually using it for a makeshift base on this side of the barricade. It's all right, though, I took care of them. They kept some classy weapons here, too. Uzis and Desert Eagles. Good stopping power, and they even left us some more pineapples."

"You… killed… a whole base full of…?" Meryl tried to ask.

"Somebody had left a cardboard box laying around," Snake shrugged. "The only thing I can't figure out is how the Mujahideen got hold of so much Israeli equipment… doesn't add up."

With food and water in her stomach, Meryl felt better. She felt around her face and realized that Snake had applied bandages. She wondered, almost casually, whether or not she would scar. After dwelling on it for a few moments, she found she really didn't care.

"Thank you, Snake," she said.

"For what?" Snake asked, not looking at her. He hadn't looked at her since she'd woken up, not even to give her food and drink. She found she could sit up without feeling woozy. The building they were in had boarded up windows and crates that Snake had pried open with a crowbar that had lain nearby. She saw the Uzis with the loaded magazines laying next to them. Snake had occupied his time stocking them up.

"You're going grey," she said.

"I hadn't noticed," Snake said.

"Liar."

"So what? It doesn't make any difference," Snake said.

"I'm sorry… I just didn't think you could ever get old," Meryl said. "I know, it sounds silly, doesn't it?"

"You're falling for the legend again," Snake said, still not looking at her. He laid down on a small cot in the opposite corner. "Get some rest. We're moving in the middle of the night, and we won't have time to be slow about it."

"Good night, Snake," Meryl said.

"Mmrphf," Snake grunted.

---

Snake could've woken up for any combination of reasons, but he figured it was because Meryl had laid down next to him at some point. He did not jolt awake or anything that might have revealed how surprised he was that she'd managed to sneak up on him. Nobody had sneaked up on him in a long while, and that Meryl could do it meant he was getting old, and he hated getting old.

Besides the tomboy, it was also bitingly cold. The darkness of night brought with it a sharp chill, and Snake appreciated Meryl snuggling up to him, even if on some level it also annoyed him. The cold caused his wounds to sting and ache, and he slowly rose to his feet and consulted his watch. He'd slept for about four hours and felt rejuvenated enough to carry on the final leg of the mission.

They had three more hours of darkness, he estimated. It would be enough.

He climbed the stairs to the rooftop, buttoning up his camouflage and making sure to keep the Desert Eagle .50AE he'd found ready in case somebody else decided to pick a fight with him.

As he moved out onto the rooftop, he paused and listened.

Total silence.

"Come out," Snake said. "You'll want to talk like the rest of them."

A spurred boot struck the rooftop, followed by another, and Snake whirled around and brought the massive pistol to bear on Ocelot as he strode out from behind one of the large chimneys. Only it wasn't Ocelot, Snake knew. Ocelot swaggered in a different way than this, and the amused look on his face was too openly insane for somebody as cool as Ocelot as well.

"I guess you'll want me to thank you for the thermite grenade," Snake said.

Liquid smiled with his stolen face.

"And don't forget the cardboard box… brother."

Snake frowned heavily.

"What's it going to take to get you to stop calling me that?"

Liquid barked out a short, scornful laugh.

"Ha! You're just like Big Boss, you know. Always glowering at me with his surly disapproval. I wish so many things didn't run in the family," Liquid said.

"Why are you here?" Snake demanded, tightening his grip on the Desert Eagle.

"Oh, stop pointing that gun at me, Snake. You're tired, hungry, wounded, and even though you talk big to the girl, you barely have enough weaponry left to storm the prison _and_ defeat the other two Rings. If you advertise your position now, you'll never escape this city alive, and we both know it. I'm not here to fight you in any case."

Snake smiled coldly.

"Then you must be here to talk me to death," he said, holstering the gun.

"Touché," Liquid said. "No… I'm here to warn you. The fact that Ocelot is here should tell you that the Patriots are involved. They don't want your mission to fail Snake, and that means they've got something up their sleeves."

"I'm touched," Snake said, "but I don't understand why the hell you care whether I live or die. You want to kill me yourself and not let anybody else have the honor?"

Liquid scoffed and turned away, Ocelot's face hidden in the darkness.

"Oh, don't insult me! It's no concern of mine if somebody else kills you, I just want you alive for now because you're one of the only people who can so effortlessly frustrate the Patriot's plans. That said: Watch your back until we meet again, brother. I'm getting better with these silly toy pistols of Ocelot's… maybe we'll have a showdown at high noon the next time we meet."

"I'll bring my poncho," Snake said.

Ocelot leaped over the edge, and when Snake looked down after him, found he had disappeared.

It was time to wake up Meryl.

---

They ate as hastily as they could and loaded up, an Uzi and spare ammunition for both of them and also two Desert Eagles each. Meryl carried the C4 they would use to blow the prison wall in a watertight pouch, and they both had two flash grenades, two gas grenades, and three white phosphorous grenades each.

"There are too many patrols on the streets," Meryl said. "There's a sewer-access grate in the backroom here. I've memorized a route through the sewer system that should bring us up a couple of blocks south of the weak spot in the prison wall."

"Then that's where we're going," Snake said.

Snake climbed down the ladder first, his Uzi out and ready. Meryl followed, and they hugged the lip of the wall, holding their noses as they passed by fetid water. Meryl was so choked with the nauseous smell that she needed to contact Snake by Codec in order to talk.

_Urrrrrgh… God! Snake, we should pass this gross area and end up in a water purification area. Purification sinks periodically fill with water that settles to a proper temperature and then is slowly drained through a filtration system. If the water level is high enough we'll be able to cross… if it's not, then we'll need to see if the path will let us or not, _Meryl said.

_I copy,_ Snake said.

The terrible stench of sewage eventually fell behind them, and they walked through an archway into a large room that appeared to be a great expanse of water. On the opposite side, a ramp lead out of the water and up to some type of control panel that included a large red valve which read: EMERGENCY DRAIN.

Snake looked down into the water. It was not murky… in fact it was almost crystal clear, though there appeared to be some sediment towards the bottom. Snake could see through the water that square-shaped pits in the floor lead down what might have been as much as twenty feet (though with the water distortion it was hard to tell), to large grates. Each pit looked impossible to climb, though you could stand on the edges of them and have fair clearance to walk straight across the moat.

"We should be all right," Snake said. "Let's hurry before it starts to drain."

From beneath the water burst a man in a frog suit. He stood on the water as if it were solid, utterly defying the laws of physics and baffling Snake and Meryl.

"Solid Snake… I am pleased to meet you on the field of battle. I am the Water… and I will not let you pass. Come now… and defeat me in my domain."

The voice sounded hollowly, as if it echoed from every corner of the room. He sounded as if he might be Russian, but Snake was too tired to care. Before either of them could respond, he dove back into the water and disappeared. Snake searched for him, but couldn't see anything.

"There was a flash… stealth camouflage," Meryl said.

"Great," Snake muttered, taking off his weapons and equipment, keeping only his CQC knife and a single white phosphorous grenade.

"What're you doing?" Meryl demanded.

"Playing his game. I can't shoot him if I can't see him… at least not when he's underwater… but I'll have fun cutting him up. I'll keep him distracted. When he attacks me, swim to the other side and hit that emergency drain control," Snake said.

Meryl nodded, and Snake took a great deep breath and plunged into the water.

---

For the first few moments, Snake did not move. He didn't even keep his eyes open. He merely waited, his breath held, his body slack and easy in the water.

A ripple.

Snake struck, his knife swiping across what had to be an arm. Snake grabbed on and brought his knee into his foe, and then he opened his eyes and the battle was on. The Water had two wicked knives that swished out, but Snake could dodge and parry just as fast.

Snake felt the tremor of Meryl entering the water and starting her dog-paddle across, her equipment tied into a bundle on her head like a good soldier. The Water turned to stop her, and gave Snake an opportunity to dig his knife deep into his calf. Blood from both combatants stained the water.

_Why the hell does he still have breath! _The Water raged as he turned to keep fighting Snake, who swept his knife across and cleanly severed one of the Water's air hoses. _How can any man fight and hold his breath like that!_

Before either of them knew it, a loud squeaking noise sounded above them… Meryl hit the emergency drain valve. There were klaxons, and then the Water took a knife in the side, dropping his right knife, and then he took a knife in the shoulder and he dropped his left knife.

Snake severed both the Water's air hoses, detached his air tank, and eviscerated him as the water line fell. The Water struggled uselessly against the other, bigger, stronger man. Snake stood on the edge of a filtration sink and watched as the red water sank down into it, along with the bloodied form of the Water.

The bloody water fully receded past the grate, and the Water took of his mask to reveal a young man's face, scarred by war. He gasped with pain, bleeding openly from several wounds. Snake himself had barely sustained any.

"Snake… I am shamed with such a defeat. Defeat is all I know. In Chechnya, I was only a boy when they gave me my first rifle. I did not know why the Russians hated us so much. At first, I could not do it… I could not pull the trigger. But in time, I…"

The white phosphorous grenade clinked against the grate. The Water looked at it for a moment in utter confusion, and then the explosion burned him down to his bones.

Snake got his equipment back from Meryl.

"Snake… he seemed like he had a story," Meryl said quietly as they continued through the tunnel.

"Everybody's got some sad story," Snake said. "You don't hear me loudly talking about it every time I fight somebody. It's common courtesy… something you rookies don't understand anymore. You aren't doing anybody a favor by bitching about things."

Meryl shook her head.

"I think you should've listened, Snake," she said.

"Next freak we run into, _you_ can feel free to listen," Snake said, and they were at the ladder that lead up to the next leg of their journey.

---

Snake was not surprised to find more bodies in the room they emerged from. It looked like a dog kennel of some kind, but the chain-link cages stood empty. Two young men with American-made M-16s lay dead, riddled with bullets in the corner. From the shell casings and the carnage, Snake could tell a great fight had taken place. The two kids, seculars by their look and dress, had died fighting, had in fact been dead for a couple of days if the ripeness was any indication.

"Such a heavy cost," Meryl muttered. "Snake… what is it for?"

Snake shook his head.

"We aren't here to wonder about that now," Snake said. "We've got one last job to do. Are you focused?"

Meryl's face hardened and she nodded once.

"Then we strike and fade," Snake said. "No more bravado… no losing your head. When we go in there, we hit them hard up front and accomplish our mission. Lead the way."

Meryl peeked out into the street. They had a fairly straight course to run northward, through alleys for about three blocks, with a couple of risky intersections. She gave Snake the go-ahead and they both bounded into the street, ducking into the alley. Snake felt the shadows envelop him. He kept his eyes focused on Meryl's riotous red hair in front of him, shining as it did in the moonlight.

_She should get a dye job… wonder she hasn't been shot in the head already,_ Snake thought, and found the idea very unsettling to him.

They needed to wait at the opposite mouth of the alley for two guards. One was smoking, the other talking about something in Arabic that Snake couldn't follow. They were very close. Snake could taste the tobacco when he inhaled. He suddenly found himself in the middle of a serious nic-fit, but suppressed it, hoping adrenaline would do instead.

The guards eventually moved on, and Snake and Meryl spirited up into the next alleyway. They encountered no resistance, and so ended up at the edge of the wall. Snake could see that some type of rocket-propelled grenade had struck this part of the wall, and bits of shrapnel and a large melted truck tire seemed to indicate what the target had been. Snake guessed the wall was three-foot-thick concrete, based on the huge pit that had been taken off the wall already.

They primed their guns, Snake readying the Uzi. Meryl rigged the C4 in a moment.

_It's no M4,_ he thought soberly, _but we do the best we can._

Meryl disturbed his prepping with a codec call. He looked over at her, and in the false light could not tell if her expression was apprehension or sadness.

_Snake… if we don't make it…_

_We're not going to discuss this. You take right flank, I take left. The objective is to neutralize the enemy and secure the prisoner for extraction. Do you understand? _Snake cut her off.

She turned away.

_Yes… I do. Fine. All right. Okay. On your signal._

---

Khalid al-Nasr did not know who was inside Isolation One. The prisoner was never let outside. A pair of guards came to the door every day once a day with a helping of food and opened the small slot at the bottom of the door, sliding it under, and closing the slot. There was some rudimentary toilet inside, and slots that let in daylight and air.

During the daytime, Khalid reflected, it must have been sweltering. During the night, it must have been freezing. Khalid never heard the prisoner speak or make any sort of utterance besides the occasional cough. Now and then a shuffle of feet, sometimes pacing, but never speech. Even the most mentally firm men would begin speaking to shadows and insects and parts of their own anatomy after just a week in solitary confinement, but not this man.

He'd said nothing, given no indication of weakness or frailty – for four months.

And Khalid al-Nasr, when he hadn't been shooting people or bolstering the strength of men at the front, had stood with his back to the door, guarding Isolation One day and night.

This is what he was doing on that night when he heard the explosion at the southeast end of the compound and heard the men in their barracks shouting and rising. When the gunfire began, he felt a chill go down his spine.

There had been whispers among the Mujahideen since the Americans had blown up their own equipment the day before. Khalid knew that had he remained near the city's entrance, he would now be dead at the hands of the legendary mercenary, the one they called by many names. In Khalid's unit, they had called him, _Dawid bin Salahudin_. This always mystified the American code-breakers, for it translated into: "David, son of Saladin," which meant nothing to them.

But Khalid knew what it meant, as did anybody who told stories about their run-ins with unit Foxhound.

The one they called Saladin had had two sons, both even bloodier men than their father, who had been the bloodiest man of his age.

And as Khalid stood with his back to the prison cell door of Isolation One, he knew that one of those sons was headed straight for him.

"There is no God but God," he whispered to himself, over and over as he waited with his Kalashnikov trained at the door. _"L'illah hulillah…_there is no God but God…"

---

By gruesome misfortune, the K9 perimeter patrol stood about ten feet away from the blast center when the C4 went off. The bodies of the man and the dog that were thrown clear didn't even remotely resemble anything living, and Snake and Meryl trod over them, their Uzis blazing at the guards that scrambled out of the barracks unarmed and in varying stages of dress.

Snake hurled a white phosphorous grenade into the midst of a column of troops, and they scattered, their bodies in flames. Meryl jammed the door of one barrack shut with a crowbar that sat on a crate near it, shot out the window and hurled a gas grenade inside, the jihadis choking and screaming and beating on the door.

Snake took cover behind a jeep as a guard tower spat M-60 rounds in his direction. He faked dashing out from behind the vehicle to the left and cut right as the guard swept the machinegun in a spray-and-pray arc that missed him entirely. Instead of taking his finger off the trigger and reacquiring, the gunner tried to track after Snake, who pulled his Desert Eagle and blew the man's head off from a hundred yards.

A shaky wooden command building stood at the opposite end of the compound, and Snake walked slowly toward it as a number of officers streamed out. Snake picked them off one by one with the Eagle as they tried frantically to find cover, realizing their mistake. Snake hurled his other WP grenade into the structure and then sidled along one of the concrete prison cell buildings, carefully scanning the area for more hostiles as the HQ building went up like a handful of newsprint in a fireplace.

He spotted Meryl emerging from the opposite end of the compound, giving him the thumbs up and the hand signal for _area clear._ Snake signaled for her to enter the first prison building with him.

_Breach, bang, and clear_, Snake signaled, and Meryl nodded. They both put their backs to the wall on opposite sides of the door. Snake reached to his side and opened it. The metal door swung inward and a hail of gunfire shredded the air in between him and Meryl. They both simultaneously unpinned their flash bangs and chucked them into the room behind their backs, covering their ears.

Khalid al-Nasr didn't have enough time to do anything about the grenades as they landed near him. He did have enough time for a wordless cry of anguish, but even that became drowned out in the searing burst that followed. He would not know anything more than that… Snake gave him a brutal double-tap to the chest with his Desert Eagle as he and Meryl rushed inside the building.

The door itself had a simple one-way lock on the outside. As Meryl went at it with the lock-picking kit in her field gear, Snake put his back to hers and covered the door with his reloaded Uzi.

"Got it!" Meryl said, and the door swung open…

---

Meryl had psyched herself for this moment for months, as she could only guess Snake had. It is never easy to see somebody we respect in a position of degradation or indignity. Colonel Roy Campbell, the man who Meryl respected more than any other in the world, was in such a position in that cell.

He had possessed a brittle old body before they'd captured him, but this was different. They'd been starving him on purpose, depriving him of food and light in order to weaken him, and his body looked wasted. In a simple, ragged, filthy shirt and pants, his hair growing long and uneven, his teeth yellowed, he looked like a man who'd had every ounce of his humanity taken from him.

And yet, he was still a man, Meryl saw, because of his eyes. They still blazed as clearly and boldly as they had when he'd disciplined or complimented her in her earliest years with him. His eyes were still his… and everything else was just appearance, window dressing.

"I'm not dreaming," he smiled.

"No," she said, taking hold of his hands and getting him onto his feet. "No… we're really here."

"Our extraction is due any second," Snake said.

In the distance, they could hear helicopter rotors approaching. Meryl gave her uncle a shoulder and they hobbled after Snake, who emerged from the building first and surveyed the area. It still looked like they'd gotten everybody… the ranks of the Mujahideen had been thinned by their previous battles…

"_Dawid bin Salahudin!"_

Snake whirled around, acquired target, and fired indiscriminately. The figure in black swooped out of Snake's field of view, as if blinking into darkness. Snake stopped firing, stopped sighting, and spread out his ears.

_I can't hear him, _Snake thought. _Must be somewhere…_

"That's what this unit calls you. They knew your father well. You are the son of Big Boss, indeed," the voice seemed to come from three or four different places at once. It couldn't be an echo, but Snake knew somebody could project their voice that way if they wanted to.

"Tell me something I don't know," Snake said, as loudly as if his assailant were standing right next to him.

"Where is he!" Meryl asked. "Where's our extraction?"

"Let him fight," Campbell husked to his niece. "Just don't break his concentration."

Snake took two cautious steps into the open.

"You must be the Void… I've killed everybody else."

A dark chuckle floated from all around Snake.

"Yes… you have. But I am unlike my other compatriots, Solid Snake. You see, I carry no misgivings into battle. I knew my squadmates were destined to die because all they could ever do was feel ill at ease with war," the dark voice said.

"Your squadmates died because _I_ killed them," Snake said. "I shot the hell out of one, gutted a couple of the others, and blew the last one up. I'm all out of ideas, though, so don't expect anything too original."

"Your treatment of my squad notwithstanding, Snake, you will find me much different. I'm not going to sit and soliloquize about the misery of my life, or the pain of my tragic upbringing. You and I will fight, pure and plain and simple, and you will find me every bit as focused on destroying you as you are on destroying me," the Void said.

Snake smirked.

"No whiny existentialist rambling? Where have you been all my life?"

The Void laughed.

"Ah, Snake! Think back. Every one of your ridiculous and scientifically unexplainable boss battles has been punctuated with stilted drivel about tragedy and loss. All your various nemeses droned on and on and on about their pasts. Even your father, Big Boss, needed to listen to the nonsensical garbage coming out of the mouths of the Cobras when he participated in Operation Snake Eater at Tselinoyarsk in 1964. Like every other coddled, rich white person in history, you ignored all of their pleas and merely killed them for getting in your way."

"Are you saying," Snake asked, "that I'm supposed to feel sorry for crap that happened in Rwanda, Palestine, Chechnya, and Kosovo back when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears rookie?"

"All Americans must feel responsible!" the Void roared. "You turned a blind eye toward the Tutsi genocide in 1994 when your very own UN charters _mandated_ you to help! You regularly sponsor Israel, sending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to a country that deprives Palestinians of their right to move and live freely in their own land so that you can have a foothold in the Middle East with nuclear capability that is sympathetic to your cause! You support Russia, which will not pull out of Chechnya and leave its ravaged and war-torn people in peace! In Kosovo you ineffectually bombed arbitrary targets day after day as Slobodan Milosevic butchered people by the thousands! The only reason America has ever mustered troops since the Second World War has either been useless saber-rattling about Communism or shameless and barely-concealed grabs for oil!"

"Look," Snake said. "I wasn't part of any of that."

"You live in a democracy, Snake," the Void argued. Snake cast about angrily for the source of the voice, but couldn't pin it down. It seemed as if every word originated from a different direction. "It is your responsibility to be well-informed, to take foreign policy into your own hands as a member of the global community. Even as we speak, new and more horrible conflicts are brewing that could have been prevented by your generation. The fact you are standing here in a secret torture facility in Iraq is proof of it! Yet, all you do when you hear the anger and rage of those whose lives you have played a part in ruining is scoff and say it isn't your problem. Ultimately, you blame and resent the third-world for being inferior to you when you had a hand in its inferiority!"

"I can't help it if Big Boss handed me a shittier world than the one he was born in," Snake said. "I've been fighting for the things I believe in. I've certainly done more than a lot of other men have."

"I don't mean to take anything away from you," the Void clarified from eighteen different directions at once. "But what world are you fighting for, Snake? What status quo are you protecting? Were you justified in killing all these Mujahideen?"

"All right, don't play mind-fuck with me!" Snake said. "Those psychopaths were fragging innocent, unarmed combatants who never asked to be shot at."

"Oh, they didn't?" the Void laughed from somewhere that was simultaneously behind and in front of Snake. "So moving into this area and debunking the local leadership, accepting the American invaders and their way of life, as these secularists did, was a completely justified thing to do? How would you feel if somebody invaded your country, imposed a new mode of behavior on your people, and a bunch of Uncle Toms came into your neighborhood and told you to leave because you wanted to live the old way? It's the very same way with most of these Mujahideen you've so casually slaughtered. They didn't used to be freedom fighters. Many of them used to just as secular as the people you've been trying to defend in this city. Your nation-building _made _them freedom fighters."

Snake reloaded the Uzi.

"I don't give a damn about who did what to who anymore," Snake said. "I had a simple objective and your teammates pissed me off while I was on my way to finishing it. The Earth blew up a bunch of his own comrades, so I roasted him. The Fire burned down the houses of noncombatants, so I took her out. The Wind was playing with Meryl just to get my goose, so I put a stop to it. The Water was keeping me from reaching my objective, so I forced him out of my way. If you're going to stand in my way too, then fine, but let's cut to the chase. I've got a chopper coming and I'm ready to send you to meet your maker, just like I did to the rest of your unit."

"But you see, Snake, I do not have their weakness! I do not have their pathos! I'm doing this not because I have some imaginary third-world axe to grind, but because I truly enjoy watching the life fade from my opponent's eyes. Within my soul there is nothing that will give me cause to lament or waver… and so I am the Void! Now… let's fight like we mean it!"

"I agree," Snake said.

Snake barely saw the fist in time to block it. He dropped the Uzi and gave himself some space by back-flipping away from the roundhouse kick that had been aimed at his side. The Void stood roughly his own height and weight, dressed in full-on black combat gear, with his face painted over in night camouflage makeup. Meryl and the Colonel sidled away… the Void was evidently not interested in stopping them until he'd dealt with Snake.

Snake wanted to go for his knife but couldn't… the Void was fast. He was fast enough and sharp enough that Snake couldn't risk getting a hold of him, his limbs just shot in every direction. Snake had to keep blocking, keep giving ground, keep avoiding strikes and holds.

_This guy is like lightning…_

---

Several things happened at once. The chopper roared over the compound, lowering a harness. Meryl and the Colonel hobbled toward it as quickly as they could, the chopper hovering over to meet them halfway.

Another contingent of guards burst into the compound as Meryl and the Colonel disappeared into the Blackhawk helicopter. The guards fired toward it, and the pilot took evasive maneuvers.

Snake sensed the chopper flying off, and wondered how long he had before the guards cut him down in gunfire. It took him a solid two minutes of continued fighting with the Void to realize that the guards were standing in a semicircle around them, mesmerized by their battle. None of them uttered a word of encouragement or even wonder… they just stood in stunned silence as the two warriors kicked the crap out of one another.

Neither Snake nor the Void had landed any blows, they only managed to block and evade one another. There would be breaks in the fight where they would open up the distance a bit, but the Void would again take the initiative and keep Snake reacting rather than acting, a bad situation. Snake felt himself tire… felt himself slowing down. He would be out of breath soon, his muscles would twitch the wrong way and then that would be that, the Void would have him.

The Blackhawk coasted up over the eastern wall, aimed its twin 7.62mm machineguns at the crowd of assembled Mujahideen, and cut them down in one straight barrage of gunfire.

And the Void turned for a fraction of a second to look.

When he looked back, the last thing he saw before his vision turned red was the heel of Snake's palm as it slammed straight into his nose, forcing the bone up into his frontal lobe.

Snake watched the Void stumble backward, blood bursting out of every orifice as he flailed his arms helplessly at where he thought Snake stood. The last of the Five Rings wheeled around in a circle for a moment, and then flopped to the ground, breathing his last.

Snake leaned against the nearest wall, wheezing.

_I'm too old for this._

The harness came toward him as the chopper angled his way. He strapped himself in. He found himself being pulled in by Raiden. Meryl and the Colonel sat in the corner, Meryl administering some first aid to her uncle. The Colonel's eyes met with Snake's for a moment, and there passed between them a silent moment of understanding that can only come between men who have fought alongside one another.

"You've got to teach me how to take a guy out like that," Raiden said.

"Later," Snake said, sitting down, pulling out a cigarette and his lighter. His wounds hurt him terribly, and he felt as if one or two of them had opened back up. For a moment, nobody said anything.

Otacon called back from the cockpit as he moved the Blackhawk out of range of the city.

"Snake! You took out the Mujahideen! I contacted the Red Cross. They'll be in to begin relief work… and they'll find the secret prison."

"What about the Air Force strike?" Snake called over the roar of the rotors.

"They'll have Recon here in a few hours to canvas the area… if they see that the Mujahideen force has been destroyed, they'll cancel the strike." Otacon said.

Snake rested back and relaxed.

_All that other stuff the Void said… I guess I know it's true, _Snake thought. _I was trained as a soldier, not an activist. My only vote is what I fight against. At least this time I know that something good came of this operation besides just getting the Colonel back._

Snake looked over at the Colonel. They were both reclining in the same manner. They were both old men.

"I still owe you a beer for saving Meryl back on Shadow Moses, Snake," the Colonel said.

Snake laughed.

"No… I'm buying. I was later getting you out of there then I meant to be."

The Colonel sobered a little.

"I should've been more careful," he shook his head. "I exposed one of the plans of the Patriots… I was going to get word to you, but I must not have covered my tracks well enough. I'm sorry… you put yourself at so much risk…"

"We're square now," Snake said. "You can share your intel with us after we get back stateside. Philanthropy could use another person on the offsite support team."

Campbell leaned back, closed his eyes, and smiled.

"Sign me up."

Otacon changed the bearing as Raiden passed out water to everyone in the passenger section. They would be out of Iraq in a few minutes and outside the Air Force's strike range.

"Operation RedFox is a success," Raiden smiled. "You haven't lost it yet, old man."

Snake frowned and spat a mouthful of water out the side of the chopper.

"Who are you calling old?"

---

Ocelot stood on the building beside the Wind's corpse, watching as the Red Cross swept the prison, taking pictures and collecting evidence. The daytime had just gotten to full light, and the hidden reconnaissance troops the US military had sent to canvas the area of the air strike were just realizing there was no need to send it. In a few hours, the President would be getting a call about a PR nightmare.

Ocelot's cell phone pulsed. He did not look forward to taking the call.

"Hello, sir. Yes, Campbell was recovered… No, I'm afraid nothing else has gone according to plan. The Five Rings will not be renewing their contract. Yes, I'm afraid so. The air strike has been bungled, and relief workers have already discovered the prison… there was nothing I could do about it. Yes, I'm getting a clear signal on the implant, we'll know wherever Campbell goes from now on. My guess is that Snake will keep him close. I know, the PR situation with the prison will be unfavorable… I will take full responsibility."

Ocelot felt the presence of the other one in his body chuckle at the upcoming punishment. Ocelot's anger suppressed any other things his rebellious guest might feel.

"I will return to base immediately… _Mr. Cheney._"

TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
